Yes, You Should Use a Mug to Make Perfectly Round Cookies

Every once in a while, a hack comes along that fills you with a mix of awe and judgment for being so basic, so obvious, that you can’t believe you didn’t think of it yourself. But while you mutter “duh” under your breath, you must reluctantly admit, it was news to you.

This is that hack. For me, anyway. Because I’ve made many hundreds of cookies in my day, but I’ve never made them perfectly round by shaping them with a glass or mug when they first come out of the oven.

That’s what TikTok user BabyChrisMom did in a nine-second viral video that reached nearly 19 million people in December. (What’s even more jaw-dropping is the follow-up video — more on that in a minute.) Under the text overlay, “Perfect round cookies. Use coffee cup or glass, right after you get them out of the oven,” she demonstrated how to transform oddly-shaped cookies into perfect circles by covering them with the rim when they’re hot and gently shaking the warm dough up against the edges in a circular motion. (This happened on a foil-lined baking sheet that had presumably been coated with non-stick spray.)

The video garnered 1.2 million likes and thousands of comments, ranging from the awestruck to the incredulous. Claims of “Witchcraft” and “My life is a lie” were peppered with “Uh, does anyone really care if their cookie is perfectly round?” (No, but a perfectionist baker might. Let them live.)

But even more entertaining — and far-reaching — was the reply video to one user’s comment: “Use a clear glass so we can see it’s true.” In it, the creator did the exact same thing but used a glass to “prove” the hack was true — to the tune of more than 50 million views.

And the reactions rolled in, 12.7 thousand, to be exact, proving TikTok comment sections are funnier than most shows on Netflix: “Why would anyone doubt this enough to need more proof though,” “PEOPLE, IT’S DOUGH?” and “Y’all got some trust issues lmao.”

Some implored that we “Normalize imperfect cookies,” and another shared their own radical method: “I eat mine into a circular shape and then I eat the circular portion.”

Of course, haters gonna hate. “A solution to something that was never a problem” said one, while another chided, “Just eat the damn thing while it’s still warm.” Both valid opinions. But still, it’s a neat trick.